Tea party, moderate Republicans look to primaries

LOS ANGELES >> Pundit after pundit on Thursday declared tea party conservatives to be among the biggest losers in the political clash that shut down the government for two weeks and put the nation on the verge of fiscal chaos.

And the tea party is facing its lowest approval ratings since it launched on the scene in 2009, according to a new Pew Research poll.

But with the shutdown over and a fiscal crisis avoided, tea party supporters came out swinging Thursday with their eyes firmly focused on the midterm elections. And while they will remember who was with them and who was against them during the latest clash, voters’ memories aren’t so enduring, experts say, limiting the fallout for the conservative movement.

“Midterm elections are still more than a year away. Voters’ memories tend to be short, they tend to focus on the current state of things,” said Sean Rossall of the political consulting firm Cerrell Associates. About 30 or so tea party representatives in the House are credited with precipitating the shutdown by demanding that the GOP do everything in its power, including not funding the government, to stop or slow Obamacare — the president’s signature health care reform.

Those tactics were opposed by more moderate Republicans and much of the public — opposition that could have lasting effects.

While public support for the tea party grew steadily for much of the past two years, it dropped significantly in recent months, according to the Pew poll released Wednesday.

In June, 37 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of the tea party. This week, that figure dropped to 30 percent, according to the poll.

And that drop was even greater among moderate and liberal Republicans, falling from 46 percent approval in June to 27 percent this week.

Still, the tea party enjoys more support than the Republican Party as a whole, which was viewed favorably by only 28 percent of Americans in a Gallup poll last week, down from 38 percent in September. Democrats enjoyed a 43 percent favorability rating in that same poll.

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And while only a few dozen Republicans adamantly pushed for the failed strategy to defund Obamacare, many others supported the tea party effort, in part out of fear of an electoral challenge from the right in next spring’s primaries.

Conservative Republican organizations are already announcing their support of tea party candidates challenging moderate Republican incumbents, though the primaries are still at least five months away.

“The Ruling Elites in Washington, D.C. have completely abandoned the American people,” Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which provides support to tea party groups nationally, said in a statement. “Congress will feel the repercussions of refusing to negotiate at all and for refusing to live under the same law they forced on the American people.”

Tea party darling Sarah Palin hinted at support for challengers running against GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Thad Cochran of Mississippi — all of whom supported Wednesday’s legislation to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling.

“The way forward is to elect leaders who will listen to us; and if they don’t, we must hold them accountable on election day — no matter what party,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday night. “We’re going to shake things up in 2014 ... Let’s start with Kentucky — which happens to be awfully close to South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi — from sea to shining sea we will not give up. We’ve only just begun to fight.”

Likewise, challengers of tea party incumbents are already building support. Moderate Republicans could find newly emboldened support from the business community, which has been frustrated by tea party congressmembers’ willingness to put the global economy on the line by refusing the raise the debt ceiling. Business leaders in Michigan recently announced their support of a primary candidate to challenge a tea party congressman there.

“Most business PACs have assumed that any Republican is generally acceptable on business issues,” David French, senior vice president for government relations at the Washington-based National Retail Federation, told Bloomberg news. “That’s an assumption we are reconsidering.”

“The current situation is being made more challenging by a handful of Republican candidates in the House. We’re going to look at a handful of races where we might be able to make a difference,” French added.

And as the primaries near, local businesses could have an even greater impact on the races than Washington, D.C.-based organizations, according to Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney.

“A lot of them have really been hit by the shutdown. Some of them are government contractors or they depend on government data,” he said. “They are going to get behind more business-friendly candidates.”

Still, in the end, most incumbents — tea party or otherwise — will survive challenges, according to Christian Grose, associate professor of politics at the University of Southern California.

“Objectively, most members in the House are safe, they might just have to work a little harder,” he said.